(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a fishing lure designed so as to reproduce, when it is pulled along in the water, the swimming movements of a live fish, said lure having a general shape of a fish including a head and a tail linked by a soft and flexible body having a longitudinal axis, and said head receiving, close to its front surface, a front spoon.
This invention relates to the field of the manufacture of moving fishing lures.
These lures are designed for fishing, namely for professional and/or sports fishing, such as casting, trolling, swinging, feel or slack fishing. Under such circumstances, these lures are subjected to the pulling of a fishing line to which they are connected and which will impart a movement to them in the water. Such lures are then designed so as to reproduce as accurately as possible the swimming movement of the live fish the lure should imitate.
(2) Description of the Related Art
There are already known a number of moving lures that are generally in the shape of a small fish, namely of in shape of a fish that is the usual prey of the carnivorous fresh-water or salt-water fishes.
Thus, from the French patent FR-1,461,674 there is known a lure meeting the above description and including namely a head in the lower portion of which is arranged a front spoon, the latter extending downwards and forwards with respect to the lure. The head of the lure is extended, towards the tail, with a body formed by a thin, extra soft membrane arranged in a vertical and/or horizontal symmetry plane.
Such a lure arranged in a watercourse is capable of having an undulating and oscillating movement in which the initial impulse is imparted by the front spoon. However, the body of the lure which is formed by a thin membrane has an undulating motion of a relatively low quality. This mainly results into a flabby reaction as well as into a rather limited structural behavior of the lure during its swimming.
One should note, in addition, that such lures must generally be provided with a shotted head, in order to impart to them an adequate horizontal position. Such a mounting results into rigidifying the front portion of the lure and into considerably limiting the movements of the rear portion.
The solution then consists in rigidifying the body of the lure, which allows the latter to adopt a movement that relatively well reproduces the natural swimming of a live model. However, a movement of such a quality can only be achieved within a limited range of speeds. Such lures are indeed relatively inert at low speeds, whereas their behavior at high speed becomes particularly chaotic and, under such circumstances, one can often see the lure turning upside down. To this has to be added a relatively high manufacturing cost, due to the nature of the implemented materials as well as to the manufacturing and assembling techniques.
A solution for these problems has been provided by the invention described in the French patent FR-2,724,091 that relates to a moving lure with double spoons. In this document there is described a lure that is in the form of a dead or artificial fish fixed, through adequate means, to a rigid blade. The latter includes, on the one hand, in its front portion, a front spoon arranged under or at the front of the head of the fish. This rigid blade includes, on the other hand, a rear spoon oriented towards the tail of the fish and arranged in the vicinity of the end of the body, substantially at the junction between the latter and said tail. Such a rigid blade, when it is subjected to a pulling in the water, adopts an oscillating motion about a pivot point.
However, though such an embodiment allows imparting to the lure a particularly regular and stable oscillation, one should note that said blade results into rigidifying the aggregate formed by the head and the body of the lure, so that only the tail is capable of forming a moveable element capable of adopting a fluttering motion or the like. This results into the lure being incapable of adopting a totally natural movement.
From U.S. Pat. No. 3,735,518 there is also known a fishing lure designed so as to reproduce, when it is pulled along in the water, the swimming movements of a live fish. This lure includes a head and a tail linked by a soft and flexible body having a longitudinal axis. This lure receives a back spoon as well as, at the level of its tail, a caudal spoon. Said lure can also receive and anal spoon as well as a pelvic spoon.
This invention is aimed at solving the above-mentioned problems by means of a lure including means capable of generating natural swimming movements.
To this end, the invention relates to a fishing lure designed so as to reproduce, when it is pulled along in the water, the swimming movements of a live fish, and lure having a general shape of a fish including a head and a tail linked by a soft and flexible body having a longitudinal axis, said head receiving, close to its front surface, a front spron.
The lure includes, besides said front spoon, at least three additional spoons, including a central spoon, an anal spoon and a caudal spoon.
The central, anal and caudal spoons have a substantially flat shape and are each contained in a plane each forming an angle of 0xc2x0 to 20xc2x0 with a reference plane formed by the horizontal median plane of the lure.
According to another feature of this invention, the soft body of the lure includes a membrane that has in its median portion and in axial direction, a narrowed cross-section that allows axial flexibility through rotation of the upper and/or lower portion of said body about its longitudinal axis.
The soft body of such a lure can also be formed of a flat and soft membrane that has, in its median portion and in axial direction, one or several arrangements capable of defining areas of varying rigidity of said membrane authorizing namely axial flexibility about the longitudinal axis.
Thus, the main feature of this invention consists in that the lure receives a number of spoons, the latter being arranged from the head to the tail of said lure. Such spoons advantageously allow completing and amplifying, over the whole length of the lure, the initial oscillating motion imparted by the front spoon under the action of the pulling in the water.
According to another feature of this invention, the body of the lure is of a soft and flexible type. This body is formed of a membrane that imparts axial flexibility to it both about its longitudinal axis and perpendicularly to the latter.
Such flexibility allows, in particular, the propagation of the initial oscillating motion over the whole body of the lure, the latter being then capable of adopting a swimming movement that looks particularly natural.
This invention is described more in detail in the following description relating to embodiments that are given only by way of an example.
This description will be better understood when referring to the attached drawings.